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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

Three problems:

1) There's very little money for writers anymore, except the extremely successful

2) Travel writing golden age was when the world was exotic and hard to visit - but now we're saturated in travel TV, cheap flights, blogging and especially Instagram posts. If you want to see what the world looks like somewhere, you can get a pretty good idea from the internet. VR tourism if it happens will only make this worse.

3) Finally, globalisation has worn down the exoticness of places. Everywhere has a McDonald's. And we're heading into a time when the pendulum of public opinion has swung against the foreign. How can you sell travel writing to a Brexit market?

(The author has reminded me of Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose Words of Mercury I need to finish.)

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>If you want to see what the world looks like somewhere, you can get a pretty good idea from the internet. VR tourism if it happens will only make this worse.

Travel writing is for when you want to read and be assisted in understanding what the world is like somewhere. Not when you want to see what it merely looks like.

>And we're heading into a time when the pendulum of public opinion has swung against the foreign. How can you sell travel writing to a Brexit market?

At the golden ages of travel writing Britain was not in the EU or EC in the first place. And being against immigration in one's on countries is not the same as being "against the foreign". The British were much more cautious of others in their own province, and much more xenophobic and even racist in the days when travel writing was cherished (and things like "orientalism" etc).

In fact, globalization can be said to make the world a more or less homogeneous place ("come to Britain, enjoy Indian food" or "come to Japan, eat at our McDonalds"), where travel and travel writing in extension, loses its interest.

> Travel writing is for when you want to read and be assisted in understanding what the world is like somewhere. Not when you want to see what it merely looks like.

Travelling to a place also informs you of what that place is like.

The way the modern average person affords to do such travels (for a 2-3 weeks at best, and with shallow contact with the local realities), informs you much less so than what a good travel writer could convey.

And that's mostly for the "affords" part. The superficial way most people actually travel because they don't know any better, is even more constrained than what they could theoretically afford to see while traveling.

I wont even get into how even a local person might be totally out of touch with reality in their own country (e.g. a rich person that's out of touch with what is to be a working class person or minority, etc).

The interesting thing about affordability, is that I've found that really seeing a place is much cheaper than following the tourist trail. 4-star hotels and restaurants look pretty much the same the world over, while a $5 meal or $20 room is distinctly local. I don't mean going overboard and "slumming" it, just look for nice places that lack international crowds and international branding. It takes a little more research, probably a guide, but it's a lot more interesting.

Most people don't really travel to get in touch with local working class. Most people aren't interested in the working class back home either.

The critical distinction of tourist vs traveler. Rolf Potts has a more eloquent way of describing that but it's slipping my mind right now.

In general, you are right because most people travel as tourists.

Nothing to do with the working class necessarily as much as experiencing authentic culture, which happens to often come via interacting with the local working class.

I understand what you're saying... Bill Bryson rather than the Griswold's.

> How can you sell travel writing to a Brexit market?

I think you misunderstand Brexit and other similar movements. People are pushing back at the technical homogenisation caused by that full force of globalisation. These movements are, in my opinion, a subconscious fight against the harshness of technical progress.

If countries focus on their local and national communities once more, they can rediscover culture and the uniqueness of their existence - the sort of authentic experience that tourists crave when they travel thousands of miles. In a way, it's a possible solution to point number three.

Could you elaborate on "technical homogenisation" please?

When I say 'technical' - I mean everything from: politics, law, technology/tools, economics, education, medicine, infrastructure, employment etc. All these areas are being homogenised (or standardised) for progress and it's on a global scale. If you want to read more, there's an old book called "The Technological Society" by Jacques Ellul - it's a sociology book, there are many similar ones but that one sort-of covers the topic the best.

It's not just technical - it's cultural.

The world is becoming culturally globalized and less diverse.

There were about 50 languages spoken in France 100 years ago.

In Nice, many people used to speak 'Nicoise'. In Nice, the old street signs are bilingual: French and Nicoise.

In Monaco they used to speak 'Monegasque'.

Breton in Brittany.

But most of it has given way to French.

The same thing all over the world.

The 'Starbucksization' of the world is happening quickly.

I was in Tunisia a couple of years ago, my father was there in the 1970's. In 1970, people wore those long white 'robe-like' shirts, i.e. North African garb. Today - nobody under 40 wears that, it's all jeans and t-shirts (cheap Chinese knock-offs of popular brands), crazy haircuts (copying footballers). You could take a young Tunisian out of Tunis and plop him down in NYC and he would not stand out. 40 years ago, they would have stood right out.

Yeah - this is something I have noticed too: if someone blindfolded me, took me on a plane and removed the blindfold after depositing me in a random capital, in the heart of the main shopping area... it will be almost impossible for me to guess where I am. It will have: Benetton, Starbucks, Lego, an Apple store, Muji, Zara, Nike...

At best I could guess if I am in Europe (Tiger?) or in Asia (Kanji/Hanzi interspersed with the main logos).

>These movements are, in my opinion, a subconscious fight against the harshness of technical progress.

I don't think the enemy is "technical progress" per se, though you might be on to something with the "harshness" part.

People are against when political decisions that favor elites and corporations, and the upper middle classes (not in the British sense, in the US one) are being presented as inevitable forces of nature and economy, where they don't have a say.

There's no rule that says we should move jobs to China, or that automation must mean unemployed people with no income and devastated cities (e.g. we could use something like UBI to prevent the latter).

But because they help pad the profits of large businesses (to the long term destruction of the prospects of their own customers, the middle classes, about which corporate leaders don't care about, like they don't care about other long term concerns, like the environment -- they have their golden parachutes anyway), all the negative effects of technical progress and globalization are let loose.

For some odd reason, 90% of the population seems offended that elite policy for their social class has been "hurry up and die out" for a couple decades.

Then people are surprised that bread and circuses which worked for a few decades, seems to be wearing off.

> People are pushing back at the technical homogenisation caused by that full force of globalisation.

No, it's even more basic. They're pushing back against the erosion of working class jobs caused by globalisation. If a Brit doesn't have a posh background to get into a top school/job, what do they do with their life? How do they support themselves and a family?

Your third point makes me sad. I remember growing up when there were still places that were considered uncharted for the most part and global trade wasn't quite what it has become today. There was a mystery to other cultures that I always wanted to explore and experience that I feel I can never get back.

Even traveling to Japan, while quite alien in many ways, still gave me somewhat of a theme park feeling because of westernization (one of my favorite countries though).

Is there any way to experience what it is like to be a rare explorer to somewhere largely untouched culturally? Honestly I feel like the closest thing is MMOs sadly enough.

Everyone has TV these days. Even the Uros islanders, living in huts on rafts on Lake Titicaca (a tribe who've become a tourist attraction), had when I visited a little TV powered by a solar panel and car battery. Although it was only black and white.

I think it would necessarily have to be somewhere deliberately cut off, and therefore probably dangerous and hard to reach. The deep inland of the Caucasus has plenty of under-touristed places like Nagorno-Karabakh: http://danhamilton.co.uk/blog/?p=180 Then there's the dictatorships like Turkmenistan, and not-quite-war-zones like the FATA of Pakistan.

(A friend of mine was lucky enough to go to the Lebanon between civil was to see the Roman ruins there. There's a lot of underappreciated under-touristed parts of the Middle East that we'll have to hope survive until the shooting stops.)

Also, writing about travel on the web has a bigger discovery problem than it used to, so it's very difficult to get any organic traffic from search engines.

The space is so easy to monetize that the search engines have taken to filling everything above the fold with their own ads and content. Try searching "trip to figi" or "hotels in hawaii", for example. Everything above the fold is ads or search-engine controlled content.

While (1) is indisputable and (3) is inevitable, I don't agree with (2). We are saturated in this cheaper content but its purpose and audience is different. Travel writing has always been a pretty niche audience. Seeing what a place looks like in pictures is radically different than experiencing it deeply, whether in person or through traveling writing. How much do people value depth of experience these days? The shallows of the Internet have taken their toll on us. I think that's what we should be concerned with: depth and authenticity.

Strongly disagree that "Brexit UK" doesn't have an appetite for the exotic. It just has to be framed as such.

I find the museum experience in London to generally have the flavour of the spoils of a post-imperial shopping trip. Even the most radical intersectional globalized contemporary art stuff can be, and is, consumed and "recuperated" into commodity consumer culture. That's a given, and Brexit doesn't really change that orientation towards the exotic, foreign or just "new".

> How can you sell travel writing to a Brexit market?

It was people of 70+ who voted for the Brexit; I doubt that they're more than a tiny part of the market for travel writing.

With all of the hysterics people seem to have forgotten that both Trump and Brexit were won by small majorities, both essentially being won by the age range who consistently vote (I assume because younger people don't have the time, and in the UK at least belief). I don't think that either would have won had 100% of the electorate turned up.

"It was people of 70+ who voted for the Brexit; I doubt that they're more than a tiny part of the market for travel writing."

Both parts false.

Moreover, the implication that Brexiters are 'against foreign travel' is also total rubbish.

Brexit was widely supported among younger people: 44% of those 25-44 voted for Brexit. And 25% of very young. That's not a small number.

Senior Citizens are the travel a lot. They are retired and spend long sojourns abroad.

"I doubt that they're more than a tiny part of the market for travel writing."

Actually, they are the primary source for the classical travel writing market.

The 'king' of travel writing is Rick Dee's (see: PBS). His guidebooks sell by the millions all over the world - and overwhelmingly, his readers are near-retired or retired.

I'd suggest that younger people consume more 'new era' travel writing such as blogs etc..

"Widely supported" is a bit misleading here, as it makes it seem that they as a group they support the brexit. Your own figures indicate that a majority of voters aged 25-44 and 75% of the very young wanted to remain. Remain was actually the widely supported position among people under 44.

I think you are correct about the 70+ people though, it makes sense that they would be the ones reading "traditional" travel writers while the younger generations read blogs and whatnot.

40% is 'widely supported'.

That there is a 60/40 split in a demographic over some political issue, I don't think has anything to do with anything tangent from that. Wide pluralities of pro-Brexit people are actually pro-Europe. Anti EU != Anti Europe, or anti anything else for that matter.

Once those young people grow up a little bit, experience the world, and see how European politics work, how currencies work, and see the implications of all of that, they might be more pragmatic about it, and possibly pro-Brexit.

When I was younger and lived in Europe, I was 'default pro EU', because I knew little about it. Now that I know a lot more, I'm much, much more skeptical for example.

But most relevant to the article, I don't think it has anything at all to do with 'travel' ... neither does Trump.

Ehh, I mean TBH I found it surprising that 40% of 25-44 y/os were supporting it; I would most certainly characterize that as 'wide support' (but not majority or plurality).

Rick Steves, no?

Yes! My bad. He's hilarious.

Your point three seems split in to two things that don't belong together to me. Sure, globalisation can be said to reduce the exoticness of travel. But public opinion hasn't swung against "the foreign" in general, it's swung against the globalisation you had just mentioned!

Nationalism/isolationism folks aren't the everything should be the same crowd.

per point #1, Travels by Michael Crichton (who didn't need the money) is one of the best travel writing books I've read.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7665.Travels

Point 1 is pretty much the end of the thread. Everything has been commoditized, when the cost of disseminating information/stories is 0, inevitably that's where you'll end up.

This isn't new though. Travel writing has pretty much always been a low paying genre. It's writers weigh the experiences they gain against the uncomfortably small monetary value assigned to it by our culture.

Grab an issue of Alpinist if you come across it. I still enjoy reading travel writing of the climbing variety and Alpinist publishes quality pieces.

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